Jake came up behind Chase, nearly startling the wits out of him, he was so focused on the rider.
“Hell of a swing, kid. Babe Ruth couldn’t have done any better.”
“What? Who?” Chase answered.
“Ah, never mind. You did good. You got him. Is he moving?”
“No, not yet. Maybe he’s unconscious, or I knocked the wind out of him. I didn’t mean to kill him.”
“We should take that gun, just in case.”
Jake stretched past Chase and crouched to pull the handgun out of the rider’s pants when suddenly the rider reached back for the gun. He moved quicker than either one of them expected. Before Jake could stop him, the rider pulled the gun and rolled away to put some distance between them. He came up into a crouch, with both hands on the gun. He leveled the gun at Chase, who was the greater threat, still holding the baseball bat. Before he could get a shot off, Dawson came flying in like a rhino and tackled the rider. The gun landed out of their reach as they tumbled over each other, with Dawson coming out on top. Dawson ripped the helmet from the rider without unbuckling the strap first, prompting a guttural cry of pain from the rider. Still straddling the rider, Dawson proceeded to rain blows down on him, one after another. The rider raised his arms to defend himself, but Dawson just pushed them away and continued pummeling him. Jake tried to pull Dawson off from behind, but Dawson recklessly elbowed Jake off and continued with the beating.
“You son of a bitch. Where the hell is my daughter? Where is she?” Dawson yelled at the rider, without letting up. He never gave the man a chance to answer. The rider could barely lift his arms to protect himself now. Between the business end of Chase’s home run swing, and Dawson’s savage beating, the rider was drifting into unconsciousness.
Dawson thought he heard someone calling to him.
“Dad! Dad!”
The voice sounded like Chase, but he was desperate. In trouble. Chase needed his help.
“Dad! Stop! Please stop, Dad.”
Dawson looked up from the rider beneath him and saw Chase kneeling on the ground in front of him. His eyes were misting up.
“You have to stop, Dad. You’re killing him. Don’t.”
Dawson relaxed his arms. He was heaving hard, trying to catch his breath. He pushed himself off the rider and sat in the dirt. He looked at the blood on his hands.
“He was going to shoot you,” Dawson said, looking at Chase. “I couldn’t let him do that. No way.” Chase crawled over to his dad, and hugged Dawson, still panting hard. “It’s going to be OK now. He’ll know where your sister is.”
Rick and Jake were both leaning over the rider. He was still breathing, and conscious, but just barely.
“Don’t worry, guys,” Rick said. “He’ll be alright. Nothing like a little beating to get someone’s attention.” He gave the rider a playful slap on the cheek. “I’ll bet you’re ready to tell us everything we need to know, now aren’t you?”
It was hard to know if the rider was glaring or squinting from his rapidly swelling eyes, but Rick didn’t care. He mumbled something angrily in Arabic at Rick, then turned to spit blood out onto the ground.
“Yeah, we’ll see about that,” Rick said as he and Jake lifted the rider to his wobbly feet. Rick turned to Dawson and Chase. “I think you two should wait out here. You’ve softened up our new friend here just enough. I’ll take him inside the house and continue our conversation in private. You might want to get that blood off your hands, Dawson, before we meet up with the family again.”
They started escorting the rider towards the back door. He feebly resisted by dragging his feet. Rick turned back to Chase, holding out his hand.
“You don’t mind if I borrow that baseball bat for a while, do you?”
Chase had almost forgotten he was still holding onto the bat. It was a junior-sized one that he’d used the only year he played ball. Baseball wasn’t the thing for Chase. Too much standing around. He did remember enjoying batting practice though. Guess baseball wasn’t a total waste, he thought as he handed the bat over to Rick.
“This won’t take long, guys,” Rick said with a smile.
The three of them passed through the kitchen and into the living room. Rick immediately plopped himself down into the most comfortable chair in the room. He pulled the footrest up and laid the baseball bat across his lap. Jake positioned himself near the front door, leaving only one other exit from the room, the door to the kitchen they’d just passed through. That left the rider standing in the middle of the room.
“So, what do you think there, Mo? Care to have a seat?” Rick said, motioning to the couch. “May as well make yourself comfortable, just in case we’re here for a while.”
The rider looked around the room like a rabbit caught in a snare. Jake had his gun and was blocking the front door. The door to the kitchen was right next to where Rick sat. It was unlikely, in the rider’s condition, that a mad dash would allow him to make it past Rick. Even if it did, that meant he had to deal with Dawson and Chase outside.
“You don’t mind if I call you Mo, do you? I figure that half you guys are named Mohamed El Something, so I just took the liberty of shortening it to Mo. I don’t know about where you come from, but we like nicknames here in America. Short and snappy nicknames are my favorite.” The rider said nothing. He just stood there, with swollen eyes, bruised cheeks, and broken ribs. “OK, fine. You don’t seem to mind, so Mo it is.” Rick pushed back in his chair, and it reclined further. As he placed his hands behind his head, the bat rolled freely on his lap. “Right now, we’re all a little confused. You see, when we left here just a few days ago, four other people were living in that fancy bunker out back. You know the one, right? It used to be a secret place, but somehow word got out, and it’s not so secret anymore. That’s a real pity, because these are good people here, and they deserve a nice place to call home. Now that things are getting desperate in the neighborhood, it’s more important than ever to have a safe, secure place to sleep at night.”
“I don’t know anything,” the rider said with contempt. “And even if I did, I wouldn’t tell …”
“Ah great, so you do speak English,” Rick interrupted. “That’s fantastic because my Arabic is a little rusty. We should be able to get through this whole thing a lot quicker.”
“I already said, I don’t know anything. There’s nothing you can do to change that.”
“You’re right; I can’t change what you already know. Or don’t know. The thing is, you don’t realize what it is I need.”
“I don’t know where they took your people.”
“I know you don’t.” The rider looked at Rick, perplexed. “You don’t know where our friends are because you never took them. You and your colleagues may have scared them into leaving, but you don’t know where they went. That’s why you’re still here. There was no sign of struggle. No notes left in the place. Nothing. That is, except for you. You were here waiting for us. You needed us to return before you reported back to your Imam.”
The rider squirmed and looked around the room as if there’d be another avenue of escape that wasn’t there before. Rick followed the rider’s gaze.
“We know where our people are. What I want to know is, where are your people?” The rider shook his head and inched towards the kitchen door. Rick saw him hedge and flipped his chair to an upright position.
“I’m tired of playing defense with you and your kind. We’ve got enough troubles in this country right now with the way things are. You opportunistic, cowardly pigs have had your fun. I’m ready to fight back.” Rick stood up and held the baseball bat firmly with both hands. “If you tell me where your people are holed up, and if you tell me convincingly enough that I believe you, then you get a fifteen-minute head start. Otherwise, this room is the last thing you’ll ever see.”
The rider tried to make a dash for the kitchen door, but Rick caught him with a chest-high cross check from the bat that sent the rider sprawling on the floor.
&nb
sp; “You know the American game of baseball, Mo?” The rider shook his head. “It’s a great game. My favorite actually. I was magnificent as a kid. Captain of my high school team, and played a little in college. Guess what I was magnificent at. Go ahead; I’ll bet you get it on the first try.” The rider looked up at Rick, but only mumbled incoherently. “Why, that’s right. You do know baseball. Good for you. Home runs. Yep. Home runs. I set the record for most home runs in a season my final year. Eighty-seven. Last time I checked, it still stood.” The rider inched away from Rick. “The kid out there that took you off the bike, he’s got a pretty good swing. Pretty good, but not great. On the other hand, I’ve got a great fucking swing. And you know what we typically hit with a baseball bat when we play, Mo? C’mon, I bet you know.” The rider said nothing, but Rick raised a cupped hand to his ear, pretending to hear what the rider said. “Why, that’s right again, Mo. Balls. We hit balls with a baseball bat.”
Chapter 6 ~ More Troubles
Dawson and Chase sat on the back steps of the porch. Dawson wanted to be inside with Rick and Jake, but they’d insisted that he waited outside. Apparently, they thought there might be another flare-up of his temper. He wasn’t usually prone to outbursts like that. At least not for years. The last time he remembered getting into a fight had to have been back in fourth grade. He could remember it clearly. It was Bruce Jenkins, his best friend … both before and after the fight. He couldn’t even remember what the fight was about. Some stupid little playground disagreement, likely about a piece of turf and who was allowed to stand there. The other kids encouraged it. The prospect of a little blood sport amongst ten-year-olds was far more exciting than anything the teachers had to say during class. Notes were passed around, and before Dawson and Bruce knew it, everything had been arranged and they were scheduled to duke it out behind the utility shed before the after-school bus arrived to pick them up. The shed blocked the view from any teachers. Or so they thought. Teachers at the school were well aware of most student tricks. It wouldn’t be the first schoolyard fight to be broken up there. Dawson ended up with extra early morning chores when his parents caught wind of it. They figured that maybe if he got a little less sleep, and did a little more work, then he wouldn’t have any energy left for schoolyard fights. They didn’t understand that he had little desire to fight in the first place. It was all the other kids’ fault. They pushed them into it.
Today was different, though. Dawson wanted nothing more than to pummel that man into the dirt. After everything they’d been through, from the failure of the power grid to battling gangs at the EarthShip community, he wanted nothing more than to be back with his family. The thought of someone else taking Veronica away from him was more than he could deal with. Or Maggie, Jake’s wife. They’d become like adopted grandparents to the kids since they’d moved here. If anything happened to either of them, he didn’t know what he’d do. He didn’t want to think about that; the world was already a dark enough place. It was easier just to punch the hell out of the guy.
Jake came to the back door, bloodied hands at his side.
“What the hell—” Dawson started.
“You’re going to be the one to explain that mess to my wife,” Jake said.
“You didn’t kill him, did you?” Chase asked.
“No, it didn’t come to that,” Rick answered. “There’s a lot more going on here that we need to talk about, though.”
“Did he know where Maggie and Veronica are?” Dawson asked.
“No, but he did know quite a bit about the terrorist cell that’s been coming after you all this time. These guys, or at least our new friend, have been lying in wait for years for something like this. Even though the majority of Americans didn’t believe it, these guys were banking on the fact that some major disaster would hit the country. They’ve been lying in wait like hungry vipers in the dirt. They didn’t care if it was a financial disaster, some new virus, or a solar flare. They just bided their time.”
“He told you that?”
“Not exactly, but he told me enough that I could piece it together with what I knew from my time in the army. Army Intelligence has been aware of this sort of thing for a while, but they were very secretive. They made no false moves and set off no triggers. If this disaster hadn’t hit, they’d probably have lived out perfectly normal lives.”
“I thought they were only here to carry out terror attacks.”
“Oh, they were, and they are. But those were just trial runs for what they have in store for the good old US of A. There are a number of cells running, all coordinated by a network of leaders … Imam. These guys are terrorist preppers. They’ve got all sorts of contingency plans to keep on operating during a crisis like this. Food stores, communications, vehicles, weapons … you name it, they’ve got it. This power outage won’t slow them down in the least.”
“This is crazy,” Chase said. “What are we supposed to do?”
“Well, I don’t know about you, but I plan to take out their Texas command center. Kill the head, and the rest won’t know what they’re supposed to do next. Everything goes through their Imam. At least that way, what’s left of the Texas military and government might have a chance.”
Their conversation was interrupted by the distinctive sound of another motorcycle in the distance. Everyone looked to the laneway as if to check that the dirt bike from their prisoner was still there. It was.
“Who the hell could that be?” Jake said.
“I don’t know, but I don’t plan on just sitting here and waiting for them to show up,” Rick said.
They all scrambled back inside the house. The rider had to be dealt with now. Rick had left him tied up in the living room. His arms were tied securely to the least comfortable chair that Rick could find.
“He needs to be moved somewhere he can’t cause a problem, or call for help. We don’t want the new arrival to know where we are,” Rick said.
“The basement,” Jake said. “There’s a fruit cellar that extends under the back porch. You and Chase should go upstairs and keep an eye from the front bedroom windows. Don’t let whoever it is see you.”
The rider shook free from Rick’s grip as he loosened the knots around his feet, then scrambled towards the kitchen. He bumped past Jake, but not Chase, who stuck out a foot just in time to trip the rider, sending him face first into the ceramic tile. His hands were still tied, so he had no way to break his fall.
“Guess you didn’t learn your lesson the first time, huh?” Rick said. “The kid’s two for two when it comes to taking you out. You need to relax more and stop trying so hard. Don’t worry about your buddy coming down the road. I promise we’ll treat him to the same hospitality that we afforded you.” Rick gave him a smile as he opened the door to the basement. The rider tried to struggle free again. “Hey, don’t be stupid. You’re going down there one way or another. I can either push you down, or you can cooperate, and we’ll go one step at a time. Your choice.”
The rider stopped struggling, and Rick escorted him into the basement. Jake opted to remain on the main floor, and Dawson and Chase headed upstairs. The main bedroom had double dormer windows that gave a good view of the old farmhouse out front and the main road.
Chase couldn’t help but think of Veronica and Maggie as they rushed up the stairs. It’d been less than a week since he’d seen them both, but it felt like a lot longer. Ever since the power grid had gone out, he felt like his life had gone from bad to worse. Things that used to seem so traumatic seemed insignificant now. He used to think that being suspended from his video games for a day was the worst, but he hadn’t played them for over a week now. It didn’t seem to matter. Real life had gotten crazier than any video game ever was. Even his favorite apocalyptic ones. What a joke those had been. It would be nice if he could just turn off the world around him like he used to be able to turn off games he got tired of. Real life had become exhausting. It was one boss monster after another.
As they entered the main bedroom, D
awson took the right window, and Chase the left.
“Stay low, Chase. We don’t want to be spotted from outside.”
“Yes, Dad, I know. I heard Rick.”
Down the main road, they could just make out a rider coming towards the property. He slowed as he approached the old farmhouse, and they lost sight of him momentarily.
“What’s up with Rick since we got back?” Chase asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Seriously. You haven’t noticed what a badass he’s become? Interrogating prisoners, and spewing all this military stuff. He never talked like that before.”
“I think he probably wasn’t too sure about us. Didn’t know if we could be trusted. Not that we trusted him much from the beginning. Certainly not Jake. He wanted nothing to do with having him around.”
“Yeah, I suppose. It’s good that he’s around now though, right? I mean, what with being able to interrogate the prisoner and all.”
“Yep. He’s obviously got some skills we didn’t know about.”
“You too.”
“Hmmm.” Dawson gave Chase a perplexed look. “What do you mean?”
“I … I’ve just never seen you that angry before.” Dawson tried to smile, but it was forced. “I’ve never seen you fight like that before.”
“I’m sorry about that. I didn’t mean to upset you. I was just worried about your sister, and Maggie.”
“Were you going to kill him?” Dawson looked away, straining to see if he could find the biker. “It looked like you were. It was scary.”
America's Sunset: Final Days: A Post Apocalyptic Fight For Survival Page 3